Stingrays and Megachips

I'm sure the story has been all over the news today, but if you're enjoying your long weekend sans media, the Croc Hunter guy was killed by a stingray on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. I dived the reef years ago & when I snorkelled in Florida last month, I swam alongside a huge stingray without a hint of trepidation. Coming from a girl who's afraid of birds (damn Hitchcock), this stingray thing may bear some investigation. I thought they were pretty tame creatures that would only lash out if they were stepped on or otherwise bothered. Even if you got stung, I thought it was more of an ouchie than anything life threatening, but apparently the barbs can actually puncture your heart (like the Croc guy) or stomach. Crazy! How did I not know this? My library hold list will need some updating after the long weekend.

Speaking of the long weekend, how's yours been? I was anticipating a rather dull weekend dusted with moments of hair-pulling frustration & lots of rum as I set up my new video editing computer system. My old computer kept crashing as I was trying to convert my videos from the camera to a format I can put on the net for download. I initially had planned to just buy some more RAM, but as I checked price lists I started thinking about buying a new motherboard & chip to go with the new supa fast RAM. After reading some video editing boards that basically told me "if you're not running dual core processors, you're an idiot", I bit the plastic & charged it all. Same case, hard drive, monitor etc. so it wasn't *that* much to upgrade. Until I realized (after the computer store was closed) that my power supply won't work with the system. Delay #1.

The next day I bought a new ultra cool power supply & fan. When did freakin' fans start costing more than 100 bucks? I was not impressed by the price tag for ultra cooling action. Whatever. It's working now & I just need to do the hardware configuration update for Windows XP. Did ya know that if that process crashes in the middle of updating your hardware config it will make XP very mad? I do now! Many curse words & a late night trip to Best Buy for a new hard drive later, the system is running. I just need to find a store that carries PCI Express firewire cards & I'll be all set to render some movies. I've called 4 different stores so far & no luck.

Next time I decide to do a "quick upgrade" on my system, please refer me back to this blog entry.